Davy Jones' locker may hold Civil War artifacts

In the city where the Civil War began and where its longest battle was fought, an archaeologist with a clutch of high-tech equipment went searching Friday for watery clues to the past.

James Spirek of the South Carolina Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology is making the first comprehensive historical map of the harbor bottom to record everything from fortifications to sunken ships.

Fort Sumter, where the war began in 1861, sits in the harbor. The fight over Charleston continued for four years and historians say the fort has been shelled more than any other site in the Western Hemisphere.

There are thought to be about 45 wrecks in the harbor, ranging from ironclads to blockade runners and the so-called stone fleet, ships the Union sank to obstruct blockade runners.